⇐ Part 3: The Unity of Existence

Tradition is not an intellectual system, because it cannot be fully understood without having undergone a change in one’s being. This is Rene Guenon’s description of the process of bringing that about, from Symbolism of the Cross.

The Greater Holy War

The “greater holy war” is man’s struggle against the enemies he carries within himself, that is, against the elements in him that are opposed to order and unity. There is however no question of annihilating these elements, which, like everything that exists, have their reason for existence and their place in the whole; what is aimed at is to “transform” them, by bringing them back and as it were reabsorbing them into unity. Above all else, man must constantly strive to realize unity in himself, in all that constitutes him, through all the modalities of his human manifestation:

• unity of thought
• unity of action
• and also, which is perhaps hardest, unity between thought and action

The Will of God

He then addresses what life is like after the realization of the unity of Existence.

For whoever has achieved the perfect realization of unity in himself, all opposition has ceased and with it the state of war, for from the standpoint of totality, which lies beyond all particular standpoints, nothing remains but absolute order. Nothing can thereafter harm such a being, since for him there are no longer any enemies, either within him or without.

His actions become aligned with the Will of God. Guenon continues:

Permanently established at the centre of all things, he “is unto himself his own law” because his will is one with the universal Will. He has obtained the Great Peace, which is none other than the Divine Presence; being identified, by his own unification, with the principial unity itself, he sees unity in all things and all things in unity, in the absolute simultaneity of the Eternal Now.

To return to one’s root, is to enter into the state of repose. By it the being escapes from the vicissitudes of the “stream of forms”, from the alternation of the states of life and death, or of condensation and dissipation, and passes from the circumference of the cosmic wheel to its centre, itself described as “the void (the unmanifest) which unites the spokes and makes them into a wheel”.

Detachment and Impassibility

The ideal is the indifference (detachment) of the transcendent man, who lets the cosmic wheel tum. This absolute detachment renders him the master of all things, because, having passed beyond all oppositions inherent in multiplicity, he can no longer be affected by anything: He has attained perfect impassibility; life and death are equally indifferent to him, the collapse of the (manifested) universe would cause him no emotion. By dint of search, he has reached the immutable truth, the unique universal Principle. He lets all beings evolve according to their destinies, and he stands at the motionless centre of all destinies.

Imperturbability

The outward sign of this inner state is imperturbability: not that of the hero who hurls himself alone, for love of glory, against an army in line of battle, but that of the spirit which, higher than heaven, Earth, and all beings, dwells in a body to which it is indifferent, taking no account of what its senses convey to it, and knowing all by global knowledge in its motionless unity.